A passion for children led Mildred Shinn, 95, of Russellville to found one of the first daycare facilities in Russellville. Shinn was the third born of seven children and spent her senior year of high school living with relatives in Oklahoma to lessen her family’s financial burden. Shinn planned to attend nursing school after graduation, but returned home to London to support her family upon her father’s death. She found work as a bookkeeper with the Work Progress Administration’s ladies sewing room in London.

She married Ivern Shinn in 1937 and spent the next several years taking care of her husband and children. When the family began to struggle financially, Shinn went to work. The family moved to Russellville, where Shinn started an in-home daycare. The first summer she kept one four-year old boy, and on the last morning his mother thanked her for running the best nursery school her son had ever attended.

“Her husband was in the Army and they had lived all over the world,” Shinn said. “I had to call my brother Powell Hines to find out what the mother meant by nursery school.”

Her brother referred Shinn to the University of Arkansas Coooperateive Extension office in Little Rock for more information about nursery schools.

“They sent me a brochure telling what you needed to do and wonder of wonders, I was already doing everything,” Shinn said.

Shinn’s in-home daycare grew and in December 1959, she built one of Russellville’s first daycares, Shinn’s Nursery. She sold the daycare in 1988 to Lavada Linton, allowing the name to stay the same.

“I told her she could keep the name because I knew she had love in her heart for the children,” Shinn said. “But I made her promise if she ever wants to sell it while I’m still alive, she has to let me meet the owners to decide if they can keep the name or not.”

While operating the daycare, Shinn became an advocate for children with special needs in Russellville.

“Several mothers brought their children to me because there was no place for special needs children at that time,” Shinn said. “I prayed about it and thought we need a place for those children.”

Shinn was on the board that established Friendship Community Care Inc. in 1972, actually giving the organization its name.

“It just came to me in a dream,” Shinn said. “And when it came time to name it, someone said Mildred tell them about your dream. I did, and that’s what we named it.”

Shinn was married for 37 years and has three daughters, four grandchildren and two great-grand children.